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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 28, 1989)
1 'lor; i line su iktr-i sysit: M, it v *kh i task ■date an( out a P. accbin Texas A&M The Battalion WEATHER '////////■ mm /■'Art FORECAST for WEDNESDAY: Mostly cloudy with rain continuing through midday, clearing and cooler by evening. HIGH:78 LOW:55 Tuesday, March 28,1989 College Station, Texas Vol. 88 No. 120USPS 045360 14pages Regents pick site for Corps of Cadets Center By Stephen Masters SENIOR STAFF WRITER mnersj TEAM sc teai I wow, Cate mu WS.ii iperstt; sully a on wil' of the obstaii ting.Cj i, Volte Dbsia:i iorfe clingi ?S:H itiom Inlra'-, meeSi B4Rei aelm: ■S: )ffi< Slovid Dlass 5eneii igibi ’racfei io hat isamt (Dotti :udes ecB artina The Texas A&M Board of Re gents Planning and Building Com mittee Monday selected Spence Park South as the site for the proposed $2 million Corps of Cadets Center. The decision must be finalized when the regents meet today. Site proposals were presented by architect Chat tier Newton of Austin and Gene Shrickle of Arlington. Shrickle is in charge of developing the Master Plan for A&M’s campus. Both Newton and Shrickle recom mended the Spence Park South site. University President William Mobley and Corps Commandant Thomas Darling agreed, saying they are “comfortable” with the site. Newton used a numerical system to rate each site on a scale of zero to 10 for several different criteria. The Spence Park South site scored high est on this scale, followed by Spence Park North and a site on the north west corner of Duncan Field. Newton and Shrickle agreed that locating the center at the south end of the park would leave an area of “green space” for future use. When planned construction in the area is completed, the park will be surrounded by the Corps residence halls to the east, the Corps Center to the south, a proposed 1,500-car parking garage to the west and a renovated utilities plant to the north. Shrickle said leaving the park would allow a needed recreation area near the Corps Quadrangle, something he said has been decreas ing during A&M’s rapid growth. The Master Plan was initiated to control the University’s growth and retain some green spaces, he said. “What we don’t build is at least as important as what we do (build),” Shrickle said. The Board postponed a decision on the location of the center at the January meeting, although it nar rowed the choice to three prinicipal locations. The Board also heard a report from Mobley on the quality of un dergraduate instruction, which con tinued a discussion from the January meeting on the quality of English spoken by A&M instructors. The report showed 1 percent of all lecture courses and 5 percent of both lecture and lab courses are taught by foreign teaching assistants. But Mobley and the regents agreed there is no causal relationship of stu dents having difficulty understand ing material because a foreign TA teaches a class. Mobley said the Center for Teach ing Excellence and English Profi ciency Certification all are being used to promote better classroom communication for teaching assis tants. He said all foreign students are required to be certified for their communications skills. Department heads also are responsible for mak ing certain there are not faults in the system, he said. In other action, the Board’s Com mittee for Academic Campuses: • Approved increasing the stu dent services fee from $67 to $73 per semester beginning with the 1989-90 academic year. This item was recommended by the Student Senate at the March 8 meeting. • Approved increasing the shut tle-bus use fee to $50, an increase of $4. • Approved increasing semester room fees for all residence halls by 5 percent. • Approved increasing board fees for all meal plans by 5 percent. • Approved increasing rental rates for student apartments by 3 percent. • Approved changing the Stu dent Identification Card Fee to the Student Verification Fee. Under the current system, students are charged Board members select McKenzie as chairman By Stephen Masters University News Service From left, Regents Vice Chairman Wayne Showers, A&M System Chancellor Perry Atkisson, and new Board Chair man William McKenzie. $5 each year for an original identifi cation card and $8 for each replace ment card. The revised system would charge $5 for the original card and a $4 annual maintenance fee. Replacements cards would cost $12 under the revised system. • Approved a resolution autho rizing Mobley to enter a contract agreement for the A&M-Koriyama Pilot Program. This program would establish a 10-week English language instruction in Koriyama, Japan, be ginning in late May. SENIOR STAFF WRITER Texas A&M regents Monday unanimously elected William McK enzie to serve as chairman. A Dallas resident and eight-year member of the Board, McKenzie succeeds Houston businessman Da vid G. Eller as chairman. Eller’s term expired Feb. 1. The Board also unanimously elected Wayne Showers as vice chair man. In his acceptance speech, McKen zie said titles mean little in terms of power once on the Board. “I always have maintained that each Board member has the same strength and power as the chairman or vice chairman,” he said. “Whether someone sits in the chairman’s chair, the vice chairman’s chair or is chair man of a committee — any member of the Board of Regents speaks with the same authority as any other member.” McKenzie took the opportunity to chastise the anonymous source quoted in a story in Sunday’s Bryan- College Station Eagle. An unnamed source said Mobley typed a letter of resignation after his control of the A&M Athletic Depart ment and the Jackie Sherrill investi gation was questioned, according to the Eagle story. The story saidre- gents had discussed firing Mobley when he refused to back down over the Sherrill conflict. McKenzie said the story was “re prehensible” and “totally calculated to harm. “Whoever is the ‘unknown’ ad- Yeltsin, other reformers win big in Soviet election MOSCOW (AP) — Boris N. Yeltsin and other anti-establishment candidates rode a wave of popular discontent to victory in par liamentary elections that gave Soviet voters their first real choice, according to incom plete results Monday. The candidates chosen in nationwide elec tions Sunday will join those picked earlier by the Communist Party and other organizations in a new 2,250-member Congress of People’s Deputies. The parliament is still certain to be domi nated by the ruling party and an entrenched Kremlin leadership that assured itself of seats without having to face opposition at the polls. But Yeltsin’s landslide victory and the tri umph of other independent-minded candi dates indicated widespread dissatisfaction with chronic shortages of food and consumer goods, rising prices and the bureaucracy’s control over Soviet life. Yeltsin, the tough-talking, 58-year-old for mer Moscow party boss, had campaigned to cheering crowds against the special privileges afforded the party elite at at time when most people can find practically nothing in the stores. Igor N. Orlov, chairman of Moscow’s elec tion commission, said the burly, one-time Gorbachev protege amassed 89.4 percent of the vote against Yevgeny Brakov, a factory di rector, in a race for a seat to represent all of Moscow. Brakov, 51, who also campaigned for im provements in the food supply but whose fac tory makes the ZIL limousines that symbolize privilege, received just 6.9 percent of the vote, Orlov said. Voters had the option of voting against candidates by crossing their names off the ballot. Yeltsin’s win marked a stunning political comeback following his dramatic fall from grace in 1987, when he was ousted as Moscow party chief and later fired as a non-voting member of the ruling Politburo. He was ac cused of political mistakes and personal ambi tion after he criticized his fellow leaders and complained that perestroika, Gorbachev’s re form program, had not fulfilled the people’s needs. “It’s hard to say what my spirit is more full of, joy or concern, about what I realistically can do to help Muscovites,” Yeltsin told hun dreds of workers at the State Construction Committee, where he still holds ministerial rank despite his ouster from the party’s top ranks. The workers applauded warmly, But Yeltsin’s victory carries little power. The congress to which he was elected will meet just once a year to elect a president and a fraction of its own membership to a full time legislature, the Supreme Soviet. Despite the victory of other congressional candidates with non-traditional views, Yeltsin is pot assured of a seat in the legislature, whose members may exercise more power than the larger Congress of People’s Dep uties. The congress will be made up of 1,500 deputies elected in Sunday’s territorial ballot ing and 750 members chosen earlier by va rious party, social and professional organiza tions. In the Baltic republics, candidates from grassroots movements that have tapped pop ular dissatisfaction with Moscow’s control over their economies, cultures and politics generally fared well in the election. In Washington, State Department spokes man Margaret Tutwiler praised the Soviet elections as a “move in the right direction.” She said that although the elections “were neither free nor democratic by Western stan dards,” they do represent a change from past practices. Nationwide figures on turnout were not available, but Orlov said 83.5 percent of Mos cow’s 6.9 million eligible voters took part. That represents a drop from the 99.9 percent turnout usually reported in Soviet elections in which volunteers go into neighborhoods to force people to vote. Yeltsin had expressed fears that ruling party officials would steal the election after the polls closed by stuffing ballot boxes or throwing out opposition votes; but no com plaints of fraud surfaced Monday. Finance panel approves hike in faculty pay AUSTIN (AP) — Senate bud get writers Monday approved a proposed $400 million increase to public higher education that in cludes a 7.1 percent faculty pay raise for each of the next two fis cal years. “We have recommitted this state to two more years to have a forward looking approach to higher education,” said Sen. Kent Caperton, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Caperton, D-Bryan, said the funding level, approved by the fi nance panel without dissent, was not as much as higher education officials wanted, but is enough to keep “the momentum going.” If approved by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Bill Clements, the Finance Committee proposal would increase faculty salaries at public colleges and universities by 7.1 percent for each year of the 1990-91 biennium. Faculty members at public se nior colleges received an average 6.7 percent increase in the 1987- 88 budget year, said Randy Wal lace, director of financial plan ning for the Texas Higher Edu cation Coordinating Board. Lobbyists for the Foundation for Higher Education had re quested a $1 billion increase, in cluding a 10.1 percent faculty pay raise for each year of the 1990-91 biennium. Texas Democrats oppose cuts in Medicare WASHINGTON (AP) — Pro posed Medicare budget cuts would intensify the grave rural health care crisis in Texas and cripple more of the state’s marginally healthy rural hospitals, two Democrats say. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. John Bryant, a member of the House Budget Committee, are asking President Bush to reconsider his recommendation that the Medi care budget be cut by $5 billion. “While some Medicare reductions are likely, we cannot allow the ad ministration to take a sledgehammer to the program,” said Bentsen, whose committee has jurisdiction over Medicare, the government’s primary health insurance program for 32 million elderly and disabled Americans. Thousands of hospitals rely on Medicare reimbursements for their elderly patients to stay in business. Rural hospitals, which have many older patients, often rely on Medi care for up to 80 percent of their an nual income, said Bentsen. Bentsen said the financial strain on many hospitals would not withs tand the proposed $5 billion Medi care cut, of which some $3.3 billion would come from reduced Medicare payments to hospitals. “The numbers we’re looking at now. . . . (indicate) many are at the break-even point and this is further complicated by the substantial num ber of hospitals that have had to close their doors and haven’t been able to make ends meet,” Bentsen said. Bentsen said a recent survey of rural hospital administrators sug gests as many as 600 hospitals could close within the next five years. At the end of 1988, 48 of Texas’ 254 counties were without a single hospital, said Bryant, a Dallas Demo crat. “Over half of the record 72 hospi tals Texas has lost in the past five Activists remember date of nuclear disaster HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Anti-nuclear ac tivists marked the 10th anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident with renewed warnings Monday that the health effects were hidden and the lessons forgotten. Scientists and nearby residents held news con ferences at the state Capitol ahd a vigil was planned outside the plant late Monday and for 4 a.m. Tuesday, the time the accident began. “The so-called accident at TMI was an act of violence againt mankind, an act of violence against the unborn,” said Jane Lee, an activist from nearby Etters, referring to the March 28, 1979, incident. The nation’s worst nuclear accident occurred when a series of human and mechnical errors al lowed the plant’s 150-ton radioactive core to lose cooling water. Half the core melted and 20 tons of molten material raced to the bottom of the re actor before it was held in check by a remaining pool of water. Radioactive gas was released to the atmosphere. “This marks a decade of false denials and out right lies on the part of the utility that owns and operates Three Mile Island . . . and on the part of the state of Pennsylvania, which has systemically hidden any real statistics about the-deaths that have occurred in the wake of the accident at TMI,” said Harvey Wasserman, who wrote a book, “Killing Our Own,” about the health ef fects of nuclear power. He said 75 percent of the nation’s commercial reactors haven’t completed modifications re quired in the wake of the accident. A spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regula tory Commission said he could not immediately respond to Wasserman’s charge. Ernest Sternglass, a University of Pittsburgh radiation physics professor, reiterated claims that the federal and state governments are covering up the true health effects of the accident. He said information has been suppressed that would show radiation from Three Mile Island in creased infant mortality in Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland and caused thousands of other excessive deaths by lowering people’s im munity. “This needs to be investigated by Congress,” he said. “We have a scandal here of incredible proportion.” “His allegations are not new,” George Toku- hata, research director for the Pennsylvania Health Department, said. “They are absolutely untrue. It’s ridiculous. We don’t have an ax to grind. We’re trying to report what we find.” About 2,000 damage claims are still pending against the plant owner, General Public Utilities Corp. ministration ‘source’ should be se verely reprimanded or perhaps dis charged,” he said. Prior to electing the chairman, three new regents were sworn in : Billy Clayton, Raul Fernandez and Ross Margraves Jr. Clayton was appointed after for mer vice chairman Joe Reynolds re signed Dec. 12. Fernandez and Mar graves were appointed Feb. 21, replacing Eller and Dr. John B. Co leman. The Senate confirmed the three nominees last week. McKenzie announced his selec tions for several Board subcommit tees. None of the new regents were appointed chairman of a subcom mittee, but each was named to at least four. The subcommittees are: • Planning and Building Com mittee, chaired by Royce Wisen- baker of Tyler. • Committee for Academic Cam puses, chaired by Douglas DeCluitt of Waco. • Committee for Service Units, chaired by Showqrs. • Audit Committee, chaired by John Mobley of Austin. • Budget and Fiscal Affairs Com mittee, chaired by Lowry Mays of San Antonio. • Presidential Selection Commit tee for Prarie View A&M University, chaired by McKenzie. Former re gent Coleman and A&M System Chancellor Perry Adkisson also will sit on this committee. • Committee for Art and Statues, chaired by DeCluitt. • Executive Committee, chaired by McKenzie. years have been small, rural facilities with fewer than 100 beds,” Bryant wrote Bush and Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Louis Sulli- Rural hospitals are among the most marginal hospital operations in Texas, Bryant said, “and these cuts will spell the end for many of them.” “For the past three years, Texas has had the dubious distinction of leading the nation in hospital clos ings — most of which have been fa cilities serving small, rural commu nities,” Bryant wrote. “In 1988 alone, 19 hospitals totaling 1,400 beds shut their doors in Texas.” Committee backs expansion of A&M system AUSTIN (AP) — The House Higher Education Committee on Monday endorsed making three South Texas universities part of the Texas A&M System after uni versity officials said there is a need to expand educational op portunity in the region. The bill sent to the House would add Texas A&I University at Kingsville, Corpus Christi State University and Laredo State Uni versity to the A&M University System. “As our population grows, the state must provide better educa tional opportunities to the His panic population that prepare them for future leadership of the state,” A&M Chancellor Perry Adkisson said. “One thing we do well in the Texas A&M University System is train students to be leaders, and we want to be fully involved in the training of the leaders of the next century,” he said. Bias Martinez of Laredo, presi dent of the University System of South Texas board of directors, said, “There must be a commit ment to the youth of South Texas and opportunity for a college ed ucation made available. “No longer can South Texas be categorized as a group of second- class citizens headed down a dead-end road” The University System of South Texas includes the three universities that would be merged. Bills to change Corpus Christi State University from an upper- level to a four-year institution and create a law school at Texas A&I also were sent to the House. A measure to merge Pan American University at Edinburg and Brownsville with the Univer sity of Texas System was sent to a subcommittee, along with bills that would upgrade Pan Ameri can at Brownsville, an upper-level institution. Measures merging the five South Texas institutions with the A&M and UT systems, and a bill to make CCSU a four-year school have been approved by the Sen ate. Sen. Hector Uribe, D- Brownsville, expressed disap pointment that the Pan American merger proposal was sent to sub committee. Among those speaking on the A&M merger plan were two pro fessors from A&I who said they had encountered discrimination at that school.